Abased - The Exiled Warrior

Chapter 14 - Tracks in the Snow

Gretch waited for the horses of the Astaevka war party to pass. Although he was capable of catching his prey in any conditions, he prefered to hunt in quiet. Last to pass was the horse dragging Nurlan’s litter. It amused him to walk next to the litter for a while. Nurlan was an excellent warrior, one of the few to injure Great the Hunter. Like all before him, Nurlan had failed, but Gretch admired the man’s fearlessness.

Nurlan’s eyes were closed. “What do you want Gretch?”

“You look weak, Nurlan. You have lost too much blood. Death is coming.”

“It visits us all,” Nurlan replied.

“True,” Gretch admitted. “But it is visiting you much sooner than me.”

“Perhaps,” Nurlan conceded. He opened his eyes and stared into Gretch’s. He lifted a finger and pointed a Gretch’s chest. “But perhaps not. Perhaps today is the day that you meet your match.”

Gretch snorted derisively and stopped walking. He watched the litter scratch two lines in the gathering snow.

“We must all die, but today is not my day. I am Gretch the Hunter, Bringer of Death, the Sleepless One.” Gretch said to himself, but wished he was saying it to Nurlan.

Once the horse and its litter were swallowed by the snow Gretch waited some more. When even his ears were not able to hear the horses he found the place the Astaevka scout had been shot and bounded up the rocky slope.

It only took him a moment to find the rock that the enemy bowman had used as cover. Blood, goat’s blood from the taste of it, was smeared against it.

He climbed the rock to get a higher vantage point.

Gretch smiled - tracks in the snow, heading away from the trail below. The falling snow would fill them in, but not fast enough.

Following them took concentration. Whoever left them was no idiot. Sometimes the tracks would disappear entirely. Had the hunter been anyone other than Gretch, the trail would have been lost. But the man he hunted had made one critical mistake: the fresh goat pelt. Invariably Gretch’s keen eyes would find a smear of blood on bare rocks which would give all the clues he needed to lead him to the next tracks in the snow.

After an hour of tracking it became clear to Gretch that his prey was changing direction, heading towards the trail. Knowing where his quarry was heading enabled Gretch to increase his pace. He lept from rock to rock. He was clearly gaining, the footprints were fresher.

Finally he caught a glimpse of his prey. Overlooking the trail a shaggy goat pelt, only slightly more yellow than the snow surrounding it, fluttered in the breeze. Gretch crouched and looked at the wind direction. Not good. It was coming from behind. He would have to act quickly.

As silent as a cat, Gretch put three arrow into the snow by his knee and fitted a fourth to the bow string. He exhaled, and in the perfect moment of stillness let it fly. Before it hit he loosed the second arrow. Just as the first arrow struck his prey in the middle of the back he shit his third. He knew the fourth was not needed. Three arrows would be enough.

He dropped his bow and pulled his great sword out.

Before the sword was out he knew it was a trap. The second arrow had hit, but the figure had not moved. Gretch rolled, anticipating an arrow to come from above.

Nothing.

He quickly scanned around him.

Nothing.

When it was clear that no attack was coming Gretch reclaimed his bow and warily approached the fluttering goat pelt. It was draped over a rock and kept in place through a combination of smaller stones and hard packed snow, wedging in place.

A trick. It was clear to Gretch that his prey was aware of being hunted. The only question was how long had he known.

Scanning the area, Gretch could see no footprints leaving the area. Methodically and carefully he searched for signs of where his prey had gone. Ten minutes later he found it: a piece of compressed snow, no larger than the gold coin in his pouch, packed into the crack in a grey stone. The fresh snowfall could not have formed it, it had to have been caused by snow on the sole of his prey’s boot jamming it in.

Knowing that the hunted could now be hunting him, Gretch held an arrow constantly to the bow string and advance slowly.

Another ten minutes later Gretch suspicions were confirmed when the tracks ended at the original ambush place, forming a loop. He had spent most of an hour being led in a circle.

Three hours later, as light was fading, and after searching the loop of footprints over and over, Gretch the Hunter entered the Astaevka war party’s night camp. As fate would have it his horse, and thus his tent, was next to the litter that Nurlan, covered in furs, had been left laying in. He was shivering uncontrollable.

“Tell me of your hunting, Gretch. What prey did you catch today?”

Gretch did not feel the need to explain anything to someone he had bested on the battlefield. He unfastened his tent from on top of his horse’s travel bags and set off to find a place near a fire.

“Ha! Can I take it from your silence that you, Gretch, the great hunter, have been bested by an old man?”

“An old man?” Gretch frowned. “Ah, the one from the Clanmeet.”

Nurlan began to laugh. “Thank you Gretch,” he called out as the great hunter walked away, “thank you for bringing me joy and hope in the last moments of my life.”

Gretch the Hunter, Bringer of Death, the Silent One was not amused.

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